Smart Home

Your next microwave might be able to measure how healthy your food is. Researchers at General Electric have developed a device that can quickly measure the calories in your food by utilizing just three pieces of information: fat content, water content, and weight. From this data its able to approximate the calories of your meal, Continue Reading →

Everyone’s gunning to be the platform for your smart home, including Apple and Google, but Quirky spin-off startup Wink has its range in stores as of Monday at The Home Depot, giving it access to a market of average consumers. The Wink platform is basically a central hub for devices from manufacturers including Dropcam, Honeywell, Continue Reading →

Philips said on Monday it is spinning off its lighting components business in the latest stage of the once-diversified Dutch electronics group’s plan to focus on a handful of higher-margin activities. Philips said it would seek outside investors for its Lumileds Lighting unit which it will combine with its automotive-lighting business. Sales of the combined Continue Reading →

Smart home? How about smart light bulbs? GE has revealed a brand-new LED light bulb that can connect to the Web shortly after you’ve twisted it into an available socket. Dubbed the Link, the $15 light bulb will be controllable by a companion appn for iOS and Android — “Wink.” If that sounds familiar, it Continue Reading →

It’s always been a question of when — and not if — in assessing Apple’s plans for the connected home, although a better question is probably “how.” As in, how will Apple attempt to bring its brand of design and usability to the fragmented market for app-controlled home products, which ranges from speakers to thermostats? Continue Reading →

We’ve been told that an Internet of Things (IoT) is coming, and our salt shakers will soon be speaking to our light bulbs. But how? There’s no decided way for all of these devices to talk to one another. That was, until this week, when Nest, the smart thermostat company owned by Google, opened its Continue Reading →

Oh yeah, this is the year the smart home goes mainstream. This week Time has devoted a hunk of its magazine to profiling Tony Fadell, the founder of Nest, explaining SmartThings and showing off six “smart homes” that aren’t exactly smart. The profile of Fadell gets into his concept of the conscious home and won’t Continue Reading →

While we wait for Google I/O (which starts on Wednesday) to find out what will become of the company’s TV platform, a team that we’ve seen bust open the padlocks on Google TV, Chromecast and Roku has a new target. GTVHacker just revealed an exploit for the (now Google-owned, and owner of Dropcam) Nest Learning Continue Reading →

Hot on the heels of its $555 million acquisition of Dropcam, Nest is announcing plans to work with a variety of products, including LIFX light bulbs, the MyQ garage opener from Chamberlain, Logitech’s universal remote, Jawbone and Google’s voice controls. The news is an expected expansion of the Nest platform, which had originally planned to Continue Reading →

Dropcam, the popular home monitoring camera startup, will be acquired by Nest, maker of smart thermostats and smoke detectors. The deal is worth $555 million in cash. Nest itself was just purchased by Google just four months ago for $3.2 billion. But the company says it is undertaking this acquisition on its own, outside of Continue Reading →